Affairs Of The Not-So-Average Teenage Heart
by BlameThePlotBunnies
Summary: The first and only Valduggery fic I have ever written. Fluff.


A lot of things, Valkyrie Cain accepted as part of being a teenager. Being quite happy to stay in bed all day - or at the very least until midday? Yes. Disagreeing with her parents? Sure. Finding them incredibly embarrassing but loving them nonetheless? Hell, yeah. Having teachers piling on the homework? Naturally. Having more choices of what to do with her life than she had years left in said life? Only to be expected. Hanging around with a detective who was in fact a several hundred year old skeleton who had assisted her in making her reflection come alive so that she could come along on adventures and fight bad guys with him? Not average teenager material at all. Oh yes, and just happening to be madly in love with him? No. Just no. Had she mentioned that he was a skeleton? That was not conducive to any kind of relationship barring the odd mix of bantering, sarcasm and butt-kicking that already existed between them. And none of this was making her anymore normal. When the girls in her class discussed boys they dreamed about marrying - or indeed doing other more intimate things with - they all talked about teenage movie stars, like Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner, or singers from groups like The Script or JLS. To anybody else those teenage girls spoke to, their dreams of wedding a star were about as unlikely as the next US president being a pink poodle named Chi-chi! To Valkyrie however, they were still more obtainable dreams than her own.

So this was what she was sitting in a corner of Tanith Low's living room moodily pondering. Although, if anyone asked, she'd probably say she was pondering the intricacies of life. But no one would ask, because Tanith, who might normally be perceptive to her best friend's mood, had recently got it together with Ghastly Bespoke - "Took them long enough!" Skulduggery had snorted - and while he was there, as he was today, they were too wrapped up in each other to notice a full scale invasion, let alone one teenage girl moping in a corner of the living room.

After a while, she decided it was time for some, well, if not _positive_ action, then at least some action of some kind. She wandered into Tanith's spare room, where she slept when she wasn't in her room at Skulduggery's or at home, and sifted through the contents of her bag for a notepad and a pen. Having extracted a cheap yellow-covered reporter's notebook and a biro, she sat down at the desk in the corner of the room, switched on and adjusted the height of the lamp and opened the notebook to a clean page. She drew two lines, one horizontally along the top of the page, and one vertically straight down the middle. At the head of one column she wrote Stay Silent. At the head of the other she wrote Speak. Slowly, she began to make her list. Two hours later, she sat back and cast her eye over her progress.

Stay Silent

Speak

Want to.

He won't feel the same.

Don't know if you don't ask.

Scared.

He'd never hurt me.

Um, skeleton. Mechanics?

Love him. Wouldn't matter whatever.

Would be a weakness.

Already exists anyway, because we're close.

Age difference.

People say age doesn't matter.

He has his secrets. Why shouldn't I have mine?

Can't lie to him. Feels wrong, and he'll notice eventually.

He'd be mad if he ever found out I'd not discussed something so important with him.

He cares. Even if it's not in the same way, he does care.

Could ruin the partnership.

Could make us even better.

That was a pretty comprehensive list of her reasons, and getting it down on paper had made it easier for her to see which course of action she should take. Of course, taking it was going to be a whole other ball game. She folded up the sheet of paper and shoved it into the back pocket of her jeans as she stood up; stretched; turned the lamp off and headed off to the kitchen in search of something edible.

Three days later.

Well, that had to have been the most eventful meal she'd ever not finished. It had ended in a bloody nose (hers), three unconscious guys (the bad guys' hired muscle), and a flight halfway across the country to escape a random madman whom everybody had thought was dead. Oh and mud. So much mud. It was almost mundane being back at Skulduggery's flat after all of that, but it was also something of a relief to hand over her mud-caked clothing and step into a hot shower. Washing her hair, she listened to the sounds of Skulduggery pottering around in his kitchen, making her food and doing her laundry. The domesticity of the scene was nice, even if it didn't quite take the sting out of the fact that Skulduggery had managed, seemingly miraculously, to avoid all but two streaks of mud on his suit. He had, of course, acted as though they were terminal. She smiled to herself as she rinsed the remaining shampoo off of her hair and reached for the shower gel.

In the kitchen, Skulduggery stood, façade in place, whistling tunelessly through his teeth as he attempted to find the pockets in Val's jeans under the mud. He'd made a habit of checking all of her pockets when he did her laundry, after the incident with her MP3 player. Eventually locating them, he extracted her mobile phone and door keys, which he threw on the counter; a Kleenex and a bubblegum wrapper, which went straight in the bin; and a folded sheet of notebook paper which he smoothed out to ascertain if it was important enough to warrant keeping. He read it twice; put it down; made Valkyrie a toasted cheese sandwich; poured her a coke and plonked the plate and glass on the table. Then he picked up the sheet of paper and re-read it; finally, he carefully placed it next to Valkyrie's plate on the table.

"Val! Food!" He called, sitting down in the seat opposite her usual one.

"Be right there!" He heard her call back. He slouched down in the chair, crossing his ankles and folding his hands together across his belly. As he waited, he thought over what he'd read. He ignored the sounds of the shower cutting off; the bathroom door opening, Valkyrie's footsteps down the hallway to her bedroom; and the bedroom door closing behind her. In fact, he didn't move an inch until he heard her door open again and her footsteps heading towards him. He raised his head and fixed his gaze on the doorway. Promptly, Valkyrie appeared in it, grinned at him, sweeping her long, dark hair, currently still wet, back over one shoulder as she crossed the room and sat down. She'd picked up the first half of her toasted cheese sandwich and taken a bite before she noticed the list on the table beside her. She chewed slowly, staring at it, for all the world as if she was re-reading what she'd written. A minute passed. Then two. Then she looked up at him, questioningly, her head slightly on one side.

"I'm assuming you only know one skeleton." He stated.

"Are there any more I should know about?"

"Billions." He said, drily "And don't even get me started on the dinosaurs! But none of them walk and talk or have my immaculate dress sense and stunning wit."

"I did think we'd have heard if there was a wise-cracking, face-punching t-rex wandering around in a top hat and tails, somehow." She replied with a wry smile.

"Tails are so last millennia." He deadpanned, seriously. A silence fell, in which they observed each other with a new intensity. "I _do_ have my secrets."

Valkyrie nodded "You do."

"We _are_ close, and that _could_ be exploited as a weakness. Has been even."

"That's why I wrote it down."

"I _do_ care, and I _would_ never hurt you. I'm glad you know that."

Val nodded, "You let me into your life, and practically renovated your home for me. I'd be pretty dim if I thought you didn't care, and you've never hurt me before so…" She tailed off and shrugged.

"Doubt anything could ruin the partnership."

"Could make it awkward though."

"You've never been a pessimist before Val."

"There's never been so much at stake." She shrugged, and this time she wouldn't meet his eyes, gazing instead at her plate.

"Don't." Skulduggery said, suddenly. "Don't hide from me Val, please."

She looked up at him, slowly, like she wasn't sure what to make of him.

"I only want pure, honest reactions."

"To what?" She asked,

He leant across the table and kissed her gently.

"Oh." She said softly, as he sat back after a moment. "That was nice."

"Nice?" He smirked at her "After several centuries, I was hoping for a little bit more than 'nice'."

"I'll be sure to pass out next time."

"That would be appreciated."

"Skulduggery?"

"Mmm?"

"I quite like nice. In fact, some more nice would be very nice."

He leaned over and kissed her again in reply.


End file.
